


Julian the Qbert Overlord

by DimensionSponge



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The - Fandom
Genre: Crack, Gen, Qbert game, Qbert: purgatory edition, Silly, poor julian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 01:09:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20826875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DimensionSponge/pseuds/DimensionSponge
Summary: The Qbert machine at the bar glitches and everyone makes Julian play it to win them free drinks.Warning: extremely stupid.





	Julian the Qbert Overlord

**Author's Note:**

> I can’t take credit for the quark having an arcade idea but I don’t know who it was that came up with it.  
Based on the time I played on a qbert machine and it was glitched with infinite lives.

The bar had been quite a bit busier since Quark got his hands on some old Earth arcade machines. He hadn’t expected much to come of it, but people from all around the station had been coming in to try them out, curious about these relics from the past. 

He’d tried to mostly avoid the ones about shooting aliens, as they would be in poor taste nowadays. Not to mention quite a few people here did that stuff every day.  
‘Centipede’ made a nice substitute for the alien-shooting ones, and there were others such as ‘donkey kong’ and ‘pac-man’ that had been classics back in their day.  
As time went on, Quark noticed that everyone had their favourites.  
Worf seemed to enjoy Joust, even if he broke the joystick a few times trying to dodge the pterodactyl. Jadzia loved Centipede (adamantly stating that it was not because of the influence of her worm) and Jake and Nog would get really into Mortal Kombat. It was somewhat concerning to Captain Sisko to hear his son screaming “Don’t you dare rip my head off!” until he came in and saw they were only playing a game. He even caught Odo trying out Donkey Kong once.

Things were going well, business was booming, until one day, disaster struck. Julian had badgered O’brien into having a go at Qbert with him. O’brien lost horribly, declared that he hated the game and said it was impossible to get anywhere near the 100,000 score needed for a free drink. He challenged Julian to get as far as he could, and that if he managed to win them both drinks Julian could make O’brien do anything he wanted (he’d had one or two by then, so was not thinking clearly). Julian got the look of a devil spawn when he agreed.

Quark watched in apprehension as Bashir cleared level 6, level 7, then 8. The doctor had a bad time on level 8 from the amount of screaming about ‘stupid little green guys’, and Quark grinned when he saw he was on his last ‘life’ and still a few thousand shy of the score.  
He left Rom to man the bar while he snuck off to make some illegal deals.

Then level 9 happened. 

***

Miles had already admitted defeat, but he couldn’t stifle a gasp of horror when level 9 started and the mini qberts representing ‘lives’ now extended off the screen. The text saying ‘player 1’ was morphing and changing bizarrely, and some of the squares were obscured by glitches. 

“What the hell is this?” 

Julian refused to stop. “I technically still have one life left.”

“No, you have five million.”

“Actually the screen shows seventeen,” he clarified.

“JULIAN.”

“All right, all right. One more death.”

It was all fun and games until Julian died.  
He lost his last legitimate life and the game continued.  
He got a look of stone cold seriousness on his face as he looked around the bar, then turned towards Miles.

“Do you realise what this means.”

“Yes, it means the bet is off!”

Julian leaned in closer. “No,” he whispered. “It means that if we keep quiet about this glitch, I can win everyone free drinks.”

Miles considered for a while, holding Julian’s gaze as the sound of Qbert dying looped in the background. 

“Agreed.”

***

Julian had now died 50 times, but that didn’t matter. The game continued and the score got higher and higher. People were gathering around to watch, cheering each time Julian completed level 9 for the hundredth time, or broke another 100,000 and got a free drink for someone from the unsuspecting Rom.  
Miles had long since snuck off. Julian was bored to tears. 

He wanted to go back in time, find whoever created this miserable game and drown them in synthehol.

***  
Rom noticed that the Qbert machine was exceedingly popular today. People seemed to be really inspired by the doctor’s 20 million point high score, and they were all playing nonstop.  
He’d been doing so well that he’d had to leave for his shift mid-game and others had taken over. They were winning free drinks left and right.  
On second thought, this probably wasn’t normal and he really should stop giving out free drinks, but Quark had given a pay cut to his staff, so Rom figured that now was his chance to get a bit of revenge. 

***

Quark came back after negotiating the deal to within an inch of its life, and returned to the bar to find everyone drunk on the floor and Julian on the verge of tears in front of the Qbert machine. People were quarrelling over the next free drink and Julian was the only one sober enough to still play after coming back from his shift. 

“Rom, what’s going on here.” Quark said in a deadly quiet voice.

“W-well brother, the doctor’s victory seems to have inspired your patrons. They’re all winning free drinks.”

“Rom. Nobody is this good at Qbert. Not even the doctor.”

“W-well they are now I guess- hey!”

Quark shoved Rom out of the way and stomped over to the Qbert machine, where Julian was now refusing to play any more, yelling at someone who kept trying to take his drink. He spotted Quark approaching and grabbed him by the arms, pleading.

“Please... save me... rescue me from this hell...”

Quark cried out when he spotted the glitched screen showing many, many lives.

“What did you do?!”

Julian had a thousand-yard stare.  
“I disturbed the qbert gods. They give us gifts... but at a price...”

Quark could see this man was out of his mind. Julian grabbed his shoulder, and whispered creakily in his ear.

“Please... remember my story... my sacrifice. Goodbye, cruel world...”  
He fell asleep, slumping down onto the floor.

Quark’s screams did not awaken him.

***

Garak was closing up shop for the day when he heard screaming coming from the bar. Mildly curious, he moved stealthily towards the source, then broke into a run when he saw Julian passed out on the floor with Quark wailing over his unmoving body. 

When he burst into the bar, Quark stopped. Then he saw Garak, looked down at Julian then back at Garak, and started screaming louder. 

“Will you be quiet?” Garak said at normal volume. Quark heard him and lapsed into a fearful silence.

“What happened here?” he asked in a deceptively polite tone. 

Jadzia, who had somehow gotten in on the fun, slurred “I bet he understands ‘the neverending sacrifice’.” 

Garak doubted that very much.  
Then he saw the screen.  
Then he realised what had happened.

“You let him play Qbert for 5 HOURS?!”

***

Julian had recovered fully by the end of the week. There was now a memorial in Quark’s to the great Qbert marathon, and on the back it had poetry written by Worf about Julian’s valiant struggle against an undefeatable enemy to bring gifts to his friends. 

Quark fixed the qbert machine after a few days, but by then everyone had gotten so much practice he had to stop giving out free drinks. Julian in particular could clear level 15 without breaking a sweat.  
Newcomers to the station often asked about the memorial, and to see the great master of Qbert play.  
However, Julian hardly ever played again. He still saw ‘slick’ and ‘sam’ in his sleep. He would only play occasionally to show off how good he was when people wouldn’t believe him, and sometimes people who were at the marathon would buy him drinks to repay him for his hard work.

Miles lay low for a while, hoping the original ill-conceived bet had been forgotten. 

He was wrong.

Julian called in on the bet, forcing Miles to turn up to work painted green and wearing a leprechaun outfit. Most people thought he was meant to be an Orion, but it was still sufficiently embarrassing that he learned never to make a bet with Julian again, or as some still called him, ‘the mighty Qbert overlord,’ and O’brien was forced to refer to him as such for a week.


End file.
